The Legal Liability On The Cargo Loss Caused By The Defects Of Containers In The International Container Transportation

Containerization in carriage of goods by sea is a new revolution in the international transport industry, it makes the general cargo transportation give place to container transportation, stretches the "port to port" service to the "door to door" and makes the international transportation compliance with the development of international trade. During the container transportation, the use of containers not only save a lot of package fee and storage fee, improve handing efficiency,speed up the turnover rate of ships and vehicles, but also reduce the loss and damage of cargo, which to stimulate the development of international multi-model transportation.However, with the use of containers in carriage of good by sea,owing to its features of large amount,loss concealment and so on,the cases of cargo damage happen more frequently,especially the damage caused by the defective of containers, and there is no specific rules to cover this problem in practice.The CMC and other related international conventions all most cover the traditional general cargo and the liability regime of carrier of multi-model transportation,but rarely cover the cargo loss and damage caused by the defective of container.This article discusses this issue upon the current situation.This article is separated into five chapters,The first chapter aims to discuss the definition of container and the current views about the nature of containers; The second chapter aims to discuss the different providers of containers and the corresponding identification of legal relationship; The third chapter aims to discuss the allocation of liability between the carrier and shipper when the carriers supply the container; The forth chapter aims to discuss the allocation of liability between the carrier and shipper when the container is supplied by shipper; The forth chapter aims to discuss the measures that each party in the container transportation should take to avoid the loss and damage caused by defective containers and the related legislative proposal.The author thinks that it will be helpful for the container transport and the handling of the cargo damage caused by the defective containers if the mentioned problems be solved, And hopefully it could be useful for the international ocean container transport both in academic and practice.